Quotes about mystery (1583 quotes, page 11)

“The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. Sculpture in air is possible, where the stone contains only the hole, which is the intended and considered form. The mystery of the hole – the mysterious fascination of caves in hill sides and cliffs.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, The sculptor speaks' (1937), p. 251

“That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"Universities, Actual and Ideal" (1874) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/U-Ac-I.html
1870s

“How, save through obscure
Terrors, imagine more implacable still
And as a suppliant the god who some day will
Receive the gift of your grace! and for whom,
Devoured by anguish, do you keep the unknown
Splendor and mystery of your being?”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Nurse.
Hérodiade (1898)

God , Imagination

“Imagine a book of unexplained mysteries written by a contemporary of Shakespeare. It might include the mystery of the falling stars that sweep through the sky foretelling disaster; the mystery of the Kraken, the giant sea devil with 50-foot tentacles; the mystery of monster bones, sometimes found in caves or on beaches. Such a book would be a curious mixture of truth and absurdity, fact and legend. We would all feel superior as we turned its pages and murmured: "Of course, they didn't know about comets and giant squids and dinosaurs." If this book should happen to find its way into the hands of our remote descendants, they may smile pityingly and say: "It's incredible to think that they knew nothing about epsilon fields or multiple psychic feedback or cross gravitational energies. They didn't even know about the ineluctability of time."”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

But let us hope that such a descendant is in a charitable mood, and might add: "And yet they managed to ask a few of the right questions."
Source: Enigmas and Mysteries (1976), p. 142

Truth , Books , Smile , Hope

“Magnify the divine mystery and the holiness of mankind.”

Franz Werfel (1890–1945) Austrian-Bohemian author

Preface to Das Lied Von Bernadette [The Song of Bernadette] (1941)

“We understand many things about particles and their interactions, but this and other mysteries make it very clear that we are nowhere close to a full understanding.”

Martinus J. G. Veltman (1931) Dutch physicist

[Martinus Veltman, Facts and mysteries in elementary particle physics, World Scientific, 2003, 981238149X, 3, https://books.google.com/books?id=CNCHDIobj0IC&pg=PA3]

Understanding

“Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 332

World , Courage , Knowledge , Universe

“For the past three years, young Wimfort had enjoyed so ample a competence from his parent, that he’d been able to buy his way deep into the mysteries of the arts of Power. He purchased no real understanding, of course, for that’s bought by the coin of toil and thought.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, “The Fishing of the Demon-Sea,” Chapter 3 (p. 116)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Art , Way , Understanding , Parent

“more each particular person is(my love)
alive than every world can understand
and now you are and i am now and we're
a mystery that will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before—
and shining this our now must come to then”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

69
XAIPE (1950)

Love , World , Understanding , Personality

“The mystery, the romance, the coincidence of real life far transcends the mystery and the romance and the coincidence of fiction. I would like at the beginning of my remarks to remind hon. Members of something that has always struck me as one of the strangest and most romantic coincidences that have entered into our political life. Far away in time, in the dawn of history, the greatest race of the many races then emerging from prehistoric mists was the great Aryan race. When that race left the country which it occupied in the western part of Central Asia, one great branch moved west, and in the course of their wanderings they founded the cities of Athens and Sparta; they founded Rome; they made Europe, and in the veins of the principal nations of Europe flows the blood of their Aryan forefathers. The speech of the Aryans which they brought with them has spread through out Europe. It has spread to America. It has spread to the Dominions beyond the seas. At the same time, one branch went south, and they crossed the Himalayas. They went into the Punjab and they spread through India, and, as an historic fact, ages ago, there stood side by side in their ancestral land the ancestors of the English people and the ancestors of the Rajputs and of the Brahmins. And now, after aeons have passed, the children of the remotest generations from that ancestry have been brought together by the inscrutable decree of Providence to set themselves to solve the most difficult, the most complicated political problem that has ever been set to any people of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1929/nov/07/india in the House of Commons (7 November 1929).
1929

Life , Children , People , Age

“You will find an allusion to some mysterious cause for a phenomenon in Stocks. It is surmised that the deferred debt is to be taken up at the next session, and some anticipated provision made for it. This may either be an invention of those who wish to sell, or it may be a reality imparted in confidence to the purchasers or smelt out by their sagacity. I have had a hint that something is intended and has dropt from 1 which has led to this speculation. I am unwilling to credit the fact, untill I have further evidence, which I am in a train of getting if it exists. It is said that packet boats & expresses are again sent from this place to the Southern States, to buy up the paper of all sorts which has risen in the market here. These & other abuses make it a problem whether the system of the old paper under a bad Government, or of the new under a good one, be chargeable with the greater substantial injustice. The true difference seems to be that by the former the few were the victims to the many; by the latter the many to the few. It seems agreed on all hands now that the bank is a certain & gratuitous augmentation of the capitals subscribed, in a proportion of not less than 40 or 50 [per cent] and if the deferred debt should be immediately provided for in favor of the purchasers of it in the deferred shape, & since the unanimous vote that no change [should] be made in the funding system, my imagination will not attempt to set bounds to the daring depravity of the times. The stock-jobbers will become the pretorian band of the Government, at once its tool & its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, & overawing it by clamours & combinations. Nothing new from abroad. I shall not be in [Philadelphia] till the close of the Week.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (8 August 1791)
1790s

Confidence , Imagination , Problem , Reality

“The tower of heaven turns darker blue; a starry sparkle now begins;
The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins
Come back to me.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Beauty

“O, lonely tomb in Moab's land,
O, dark Bethpeor's hill,
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still!
God hath His mysteries of grace —

Ways that we cannot tell;
He hides them deep, like the secret sleep,

Of him He loved so well.”

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895) British hymn-writer and poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 280.

Love , God , Secret , Way

“Some few intense enjoyments are given us in life; among them all, perhaps, there is none with so deep a charm as to sit by the side of those we love, and watch them sleeping. Sleep is so innocent, so peaceful in its mystery and its helplessness; and sitting there we can fancy ourselves the guardian angels holding off the thousand evils imagination paints for ever hanging over what is most precious, most dear to us. The long deep-drawn breathing; the smile we love to hope is called up over the features by our own presence in the heart; there are no moments in life we would exchange for the few we have spent by the side of these.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Love , Life , Peace , Smile

“The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own; and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense. The meaning of all general, and especially of all abstract terms, became in this way enveloped in a mystical base…”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind http://books.google.com/books?id=GxIuAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=james+mill&ei=jsFoR7yAOYfQiwHEzdVv&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPA5,M1 (1829) by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)

Men , Way , Imagination , Sense

“The Big Bang theory has been extremely successful in describing the history and evolution of the Universe, and new experiments and observations continue to confirm the basic predictions of this theory. But we do not yet know the answer to the question
What is the Universe made of?
The evidence for dark matter and dark energy has rewritten this question, redirected our efforts to address it — and strengthened the motivation for finding an answer. Dark matter and dark energy cannot be explained by our current model of fundamental physics; deciphering these mysterious substances will require a leap into a new realm of understanding, a theoretical upheaval that will rival the changes brought about by quantum mechanics and general relativity.”

Evalyn Gates (1958)

Einstein's Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe (2009), Epilogue : Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Keys to the Next Revoution, p. 267

History , Motivation , Understanding , Question

“Here the ancient mystery
Holds its hands out day by day,
Takes a chair and croons with me
By my cabin built of clay.
When the dusky shadow flits,
By the chimney nook I see
Where the old enchanter sits,
Smiles, and waves, and beckons me.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Smile

“A car coughed, starting. Morning softly
Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair
From underseas, kindled the looking-glass,
Distinguished the dresser and the white wall.
The bird called tentatively, whistled, called,
Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet
With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so,
O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail
Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning
Again and again,
while history is unforgiven.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"In the Naked Bed, in Plato's Cave" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-naked-bed-in-plato-s-cave/
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Cars , History , Bird , Sleep

“Pity those—adventurers, adolescents, authors of young adult fiction—who make their way in the borderland between worlds. It is at worst an invisible and at best an inhospitable place. Build your literary house on the borderlands, as the English writer Philip Pullman has done, and you may find that your work is recommended by booksellers, as a stopgap between installments of Harry Potter, to children who cannot (one hopes) fully appreciate it, and to adults, disdainful or baffled, who 'don't read fantasy.' Yet all mystery resides there, in the margins, between life and death, childhood and adulthood, Newtonian and quantum, 'serious' and 'genre' literature. And it is from the confrontation with mystery that the truest stories have always drawn their power.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Dust & Daemons, The New York Review of Books (March 25, 2004)

Life , Death , Children , World

“When it began to grow dark, the Rat, with an air of excitement and mystery, summoned them back into the parlour, stood each of them up alongside of his little heap, and proceeded to dress them up for the coming expedition.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 12, "The Return Of Ulysses"

“David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9/11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation [into] that historic and troubling event.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Comment on David Ray Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor, quoted at 911Truth.org (13 August 2004) http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040525224251221

“It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

The Translator As Reader, p. 273-274.
A History of Reading (1996)

Reading , Wealth

“Our creative habits are as mysterious to each other as our domestic habits.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Poetry Quotes

“My breast, though proofless, still attests a bite
Mysterious, due to some august tooth;
But enough! for confidant such mystery chose
The great double reed which one plays 'neath the blue.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Confidence

“The mystery is that the world is at it is -- a mystery that is the source of all joy and all sorrow, of all hope and fear, and the source of development both creative and degenerative. The contingency of all into which time enters is the source of pathos, comedy, and tragedy.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

World , Fear , Hope , Time

“An air of mystery surrounds his researches, lying, as they do, chiefly in depths to which the far-seeing eye of the telescope alone penetrates.”

Richard Anthony Proctor (1837–1888) English astronomer

Source: Saturn and its System (2nd ed 1882), Chapter 1, p. 2

Lying

“It was the kind of town that made you feel like Humphrey Bogart: you came in on a bumpy little plane, and, for some mysterious reason, got a private room with a balcony overlooking the town and the harbor; then you sat there and drank until something happened. I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

Feeling

“Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to the editor of The New York Times Saturday Book Review (August 1901), as quoted in Joseph Conrad: A Life (2007) by Zdzisław Najder, translated by Halina Najder, p. 315

World

“Ordinarily, when he thought back upon those days, let alone upon his student years and the Bamboo Grove, it had always been as if he were gazing from a cool, dull room out into broad, brightly sunlit landscapes, into the irrevocable past, the paradise of memory. Such recollections had always been, even when they were free of sadness, a vision of things remote and different, separated from the prosaic present by a mysterious festiveness.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Sadness , Memory , Past

“I borrow some subject or other from life or from nature, and, using it as a pretext, I arrange lines and colors so as to obtain symphonies, harmonies that do not represent a thing that is real, in the vulgar sense of the word, and do not directly express any idea, but are supposed to make you think the way music is supposed to make you think, unaided by ideas or images, simply through the mysterious affinities that exist between our brains and such arrangements of colors and lines.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 109

Life , Music , Color , Way

“The human soul yearns for discovery. By unlocking the mysteries of the universe, we unlock truths within ourselves. That's true. Our journey into space will not only make us stronger and more prosperous, but will unite us behind grand ambitions and bring us all closer together. Wouldn't that be nice? Can you believe that space is going to do that? I thought politics would do that. (Laughter.) Well, we'll have to rely on space instead.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, June

Truth , Soul , Laughter , Universe

“She has never harmed us, nor would she should we have fallen into her hands. It is only the men of her kind who war upon us, and I have ever thought that their attitude toward us is but the reflection of ours toward them. They live at peace with all their fellows, except when duty calls upon them to make war, while we are at peace with none; forever warring among our own kind as well as upon the red men, and even in our own communities the individuals fight amongst themselves. Oh, it is one continual, awful period of bloodshed from the time we break the shell until we gladly embrace the bosom of the river of mystery, the dark and ancient Iss which carries us to an unknown, but at least no more frightful and terrible existence! Fortunate indeed is he who meets his end in an early death. Say what you please to Tars Tarkas, he can mete out no worse fate to me than a continuation of the horrible existence we are forced to lead in this life.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book A Princess of Mars

Source: A Princess of Mars (1917), Chapter 9

Life , Death , Men , Fate

“Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?”

John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza 4
Poems (1820), Ode on a Grecian Urn

“My whole intention in painting is to make a thing poetical; but not poetical in a literary sense. I want something that evokes mood, a background, a stage set for certain characters that are playing certain parts. When I paint I do not consider myself an abstractionist in the sense that I'm trying to create beautiful forms that fit together like a puzzle. The things in my painting are intended to strike something that is an emotional involvement – that has to do with the human personality and all the mysteries of life, not simply colors or abstract balances. To me, it's all reality.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

Quote from An interview with William Baziotes, eds. P. Franks and M. White, Perspective no. 2, Hunter College New York (1956-57), pp. 27, 29-30
1950s

Life , Beauty , Color , Mood

“[Time is not] a mysterious illusion of the intellect... It is an essential feature of the universe.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

The Nature of Time (1961) as quoted by Douglas Martin, "Gerald J. Whitrow, 87, Author Of Philosophic Tomes on Time" The New York Times (June 27, 2000)

Universe , Time

“You never understood games. Maybe that's why the world was such a mystery to you.”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 45: Respawning, Character: Sobel

World , Game

“Every phenomenon of nature was a word, — the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas. Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for God was the word.”

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 32.

God , Communication , Idea , Nature

“I really enjoy good murder mystery writers, usually women, frequently English, because they have a sense of what the human soul is about and why people do dark and terrible things. I also read quite a lot in the area of particle physics and quantum mechanics, because this is theology. This is about the nature of being. This is what life is all about. I try to read as widely as I possibly can.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)

Life , Women , People , Soul

“Silence. Archie let it gather. He could always feel a heightening of interest in the room. It always happened this way when an assignment was about to be given. He knew what they were thinking- what's Archie come up with this time? Sometimes Archie resented them. The members of The Vigils did nothing but enforce the rules. Carter was muscle and Obie an errand boy. Archie alone was always under pressure, devising the assignments, working them out. As if he was some kind of machine. Press a button: out comes an assignment. What did they know about the agonies of it all? The nights he tossed and turned? The times he felt used up, empty? And yet he couldn't deny he exulted in moments like this, the guys leaning forward in anticipation, the mystery that surrounded them all, the kid Goober white-faced and frightened, the place so quiet you could almost hear your own heartbeat. And all eyes on him: Archie.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 33

Way , Guy , Feeling , Boy

“You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick… You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in. The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Poetic Manifesto

God , Tear , Joy

“Men are different. It is diversity that makes life interesting. There is no common basis in mens minds. The unconscious is inexhaustible and uncontrollable. Its force surpasses us. It is as mysterious as the last particle of a brain cell. Even if we knew it, we could not reconstruct it.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

Life , Men

“Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, "convulsions of nature," etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" The Fountains and Streams of the Yosemite National Park http://books.google.com/books?id=2CsRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA556", The Atlantic Monthly, volume LXXXVII, number 519 (January 1901) pages 556-565 (at page 565); reprinted in Our National Parks http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/our_national_parks/ (1901), chapter 8: The Fountains and Streams of the Yosemite National Park
1900s, Our National Parks (1901)

Love , God , Nature

“I prowled the city with my Ford: I found mysterious alleys, lonely trees, rotting old houses out of a vanished past. Day and night I lived in my Ford, pausing only long enough to order a hamburger and a cup of coffee at strange roadside cafes.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Seventeen

Coffee , Tree , Past , Housing

“Whoever believes in a God at all, believes in an infinite mystery; and if the existence of God is such an infinite mystery, we can very well expect and afford to have many of His ways mysterious to us.”

Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 421.

God , Way

“Image of beauty, when I gaze on thee,
Trembling I waken to a mystery,
How through one door we go to life or death
By spirit kindled or the sensual breath.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Life , Death , Beauty

“There are to whom each symbol is a mask;
The life of love is a mysterious task;
They want no answer, for they would not ask.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The One In All

Love , Life

“There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 428

People

“He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair; nor to-morrow's, lest he become a visionary—not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work; nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his actions.
Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.
Thus ought Man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible; nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

Paper communicated to Frederic Farrar (1854) Æt. 23, as quoted in Lewis Campbell, William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence and Occasional Writings (1884) pp. 144-145, https://books.google.com/books?id=B7gEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA144 and in Richard Glazebrook, James Clerk Maxwell and Modern Physics (1896) pp. 39-40. https://books.google.com/books?id=hbcEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA39

Life , Truth , Confidence , Nature

“The mysterious universe cannot be explained from one angle alone; instead it requires multiple paradigms including Newtonian physics, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Universe

“Instead of wanting everyone to share and know of their discoveries the Pythagoreans suppressed the square root of two and the dodecahedron. The outside world was not to know. The Pythagoreans had discovered, in the mathematical underpinnings of nature, one of the two most powerful scientific tools, the other of course is experiment, but instead of using their insight to advance the collective voyage of human discovery they made of it little more than the hocus-pocus of a mystery cult. Science and mathematics were to be removed from the hands of the merchants and the artisans.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

38 min 10 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Backbone of Night [Episode 7]

World , Mathematics , Nature , Science

“(about concerts)"I love the adrenaline rush you get from having a live audience in front of you. There's nothing like performing live. I like to categorize classical music as one of those really beautiful, glamorous gems from the old era. The men are in tails onstage, the women are in beautiful dresses and the soloist comes out in a gorgeous evening gown. I really, really love that old-school glamour. For me, concert days are always exciting. It doesn't matter if I give 100 concerts or 150 concerts that season. Every concert is magical. Every concert has a sparkle to it. The challenge is to keep myself fresh and to give a spontaneous performance every single night while maturing and growing as a musician every day. The whole art form of being onstage is so mysterious and magical, it fascinates me. "”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

Newsweek September 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870541/site/newsweek/?page=6

Love , Women , Men , School

“Nobody knows what dark matter is. It is another deep mystery waiting to be explored. We know only that it is there, and that it weighs more than the stuff that we can see.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Waiting

“Not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of God's word by the loss of earthly joys — sickness destroying the flavor of them all — did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ, and to know that I love Him — this is all.”

Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) American musician, hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 568.

Love , God , Study , Learning

“So his life has flowed
From its mysterious urn a sacred stream,
In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure
Alone are mirrored; which, though shapes of ill
May hover round its surface, glides in light,
And takes no shadow from them.”

Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795–1854) British politician

Act i. Sc. 1.
Ion (1835)

Life , Beauty , Light

“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed without source to Einstein in Mieczyslaw Taube, Evolution of Matter and Energy on a Cosmic and Planetary Scale (1985), page 1
Disputed

Books , Understanding , Universe

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Music , Color , Mathematics , Thinking

“Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,
Rising and reaching upward to the skies;
Listen to voices in the upper air,
Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Castle-builder.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Faith

“Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.”

Ezra Pound book The Spirit of Romance

The Spirit of Romance (1910), p. 5

Mathematics , Science

“By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Wisdom , Age , Time

“It is the great mystery of life itself which is at the bottom of all the mysterious language we are obliged to employ concerning it.”

Peter Mere Latham (1789–1875) English physician and educator

Book II, p. 494.
Collected Works

Life

“Another lottery mystery that raised many eyebrows occurred in Germany on June 21, 1995. The freak event happened in a lottery called Lotto 6/49, which means that the winning six numbers are drawn from 1 to 49. On the day in question the winning numbers were 15-25-27-30-42-48. The very same sequence had been drawn previously, on December 20, 1986. It was the first time in 3,016 drawings that a winning sequence had been repeated. What were the chances of that? Not as bad as you'd think. When you do the math, the chance of a repeat at some point over the years comes out to around 28 percent.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 4, Tracking The Pathways To Success, p. 65

Question , Thinking , Chance , Time

“Yet it cannot be concealed that the nation in general is far from being contented. The frequent insurrections in the distant provinces are ambiguous oracles of the real sentiments of the people. The predominance of the Tartars and the Emperors's partiality for them are the common subjects of conversation among the Chinese whenever they meet together in private. There are certain mysterious societies in every province, who, though narrowly watched by the Government, find means to elude its vigilance, and often hold secret assemblies, where they revive the memory of ancient independence, brood over recent injuries, and meditate revenge”

George Macartney (1737–1806) British statesman, colonial administrator and diplomat

Our First Ambassador to China (Biography, 1908)

People , Secret , Revenge , Distant

“God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in Truth Against the World : Frank Lloyd Wright speaks for an organic architecture (1987) edited by Patrick J. Meehan 
Context: God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing.

God , Motivation , Nature

“I guess I got whacked hard in the mystery department when I was little. I found the world completely and totally fascinating then — it was like a dream. They say that people who think they had a happy childhood are blocking something out, but I think I really had one. Of course I had the usual fears, like going to school — I knew there was some sort of problem there. But every other person sensed that problem too, so my fears were pretty normal.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

McKenna interview (1992)

People , World , Fear , School

“Uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our final destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable foundation, may be the basis of an ethic.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem

Despair

“There was a comfort in the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe that some intelligence might have solved the riddle of that mysterious equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together.”

Clifford D. Simak book Way Station

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 30

Intelligence , Universe , Time , Personality

“Starting with the Minnesota twin study thirty-five years ago, and now with a mountain of data from twin, sibling, and adoption studies, we know that pretty much anything you can quantify about human personality, behavior, and intelligence is to some degree heritable, average-average at around the fifty percent level but sometimes much higher. We now in fact have a busy and exciting field of study called “behavioral genetics.” Given that all these traits are heritable, it follows from the ordinary laws of biology that different races will exhibit different statistical profiles on them. That’s not astonishing, mysterious, or horrible: It’s just first-floor-level science.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

John Derbyshire On Why Race Realism Makes More Sense Than “Magic Dirt” Theory http://www.vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-on-why-race-realism-makes-more-sense-than-magic-dirt-theory, VDARE, November 1, 2015.

Law , Behavior , Mountain , Intelligence

“without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last) most people fear most:
a mystery for which iv'e
no word except alive”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

30
73 poems (1963)

People , Fear

“In each of us there dwells a mystery, and that mystery is the human personality.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

The Rights of Man and Natural Law (1943), p. 2.

Personality

“The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

World , Effort , Time , Past

“People have no idea of the sources for my work. I didn't invent anything; It's all there in the culture; it's not a big mystery. I just combine my personal experience with classic cartoon stereotypes.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

Comment made to the press in 1976, quoted in The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 260

People , Idea , Personality

“Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?”

Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) British author, literary critic, and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography

The Fortnightly Review, vol. 25 (1876) p. 859

Men , Angels , Problem

“There is one aspect of our own mentality for which it's difficult as yet to foresee what type of explanation would even be relevant. I'm referring, of course, to consciousness. The point is that although I have no reason to believe that my consciousness is implemented by anything other than my brain, I remain convinced that there's something impenetrably mysterious about the relationship between brains and thoughts. And you can understand, therefore, why it's so hard to imagine, let alone tolerate, the idea that the death of the brain necessarily leads to the end of the personal self – and this, of course, is the "trump card" with which religion has consistently played.”

Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) British theatre director (born 1934)

Episode three: "The Final Hour".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

Death , Religion , Imagination , Idea

“Were there no mysteries in the Bible, we should doubt its being the transcript of the Eternal Mind. The "mystery of godliness" adapts it to our ruined race. Those mysteries of the Bible are like the mountains of the world; they give grandeur to the landscape and fertility to the soil.”

Joseph Dare (reverend) (1831–1880) Australian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 422.

World , Mountain

“There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Minnesota declaration (1999)

Truth , Imagination

“The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality but intentionality. What is the prime mover, the weaver who guides the flashing shuttles?”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Love , Dreams

“I don't believe in folks making a sort of mystery of themselves. I believe in being neighbourly, I do.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Source: Dashpers http://www.dashper.net.nz/dashpers.htm (unfinished, unpublished novel), Chapter One - The House

“In spring I stopped eating the bodies of living things. Nonetheless, the other day I ate several slices of tuna sashimi as a form of magic to “undertake” my “communication” with “society.” I also stirred a cup of chawanmushi with a spoon. If the fish, while being eaten, had stood behind me and watched, what would he have thought? “I gave up my only life and this person is eating my body as if it were something distasteful.” “He’s eating me in anger.” “He’s eating me out of desperation.” “He’s thinking of me and, while quietly savoring my fat with his tongue, praying, ‘Fish, you will come with me as my companion some day, won’t you?’” “Damn! He’s eating my body!” Well, different fish would have had different thoughts. … Suppose I were the fish, and suppose that not only I were being eaten but my father were being eaten, my mother were being eaten, and my sister were also being eaten. And suppose I were behind the people eating us, watching. “Oh, look, that man has torn apart my sibling with chopsticks. Talking to the person next to him, he swallowed her, thinking nothing of it. Just a few minutes ago her body was lying there, cold. Now she must be disintegrating in a pitch-dark place under the influence of mysterious enzymes. Our entire family have given up our precious lives that we value, we’ve sacrificed them, but we haven’t won a thimbleful of pity from these people.””

Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933) Japanese poet and author of children's literature

I must have been once a fish that was eaten.
Letter to Hosaka (May 1918); as quoted in Miyazawa Kenji: Selections, edited by Hiroaki Sato (University of California Press, 2007), pp. 12 https://books.google.it/books?id=D7IwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA12-13.

Life , People , Family , Spring

“When I first set my sights on becoming a writer at age eleven or so, I wanted to be a fantasy and science fiction writer. That was my preferred reading material and that's what I thought I was going to write. That's always been there. You can even see little hints of it in Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonderboys.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Interview with Metro Weekly, March 12, 2002

Age , Science , Reading

“Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be;
Yet oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see!”

Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905) Children's writer, novelist, poet, editor

The Two Mysteries (1904).

Life , Death

“I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Love , Pain , World , Feeling

“Numbers were a mystery to me. I was so far behind. It was only in Nairobi, at age ten, that I figured out anything at all about the way time is calculated: minutes, hours, years. In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o'clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili.) The months, the days--everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary school did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times. Grandma never learned to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 5: Secret Rendezvous, Sex, and the Scent of Sukumawiki

Life , People , Age , School

“So,” said Raven, “once again tonight we are presented with a mysterious sign and no way to know whether it completes a pattern or destroys one.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Section 3 (p. 245)
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

Way

“The female body’s unbearable hiddenness applies to all aspects men’s dealings with women. What does it look like in there? Did she have an orgasm? Is it really my child? Who was my real father? Mystery surrounds women’s sexuality. This mystery is the main reason for the imprisonment man has imposed on women. Only by confining his wife in a locked harem guarded by eunuchs could he be certain that her son was also his.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 22

Women , Men

“The houses, many of them no longer lived in by the people whose faces he all knew, are like the houses in a town you see from the train, their brick faces blank in posing the riddle, Why does anyone live here? Why was he set down here, why is this town, a dull suburb of a third-rate city, for him the center and index of a universe that contains immense prairies, mountains, deserts, forests, cities, seas? This childish mystery—the mystery of ‘any place,’ prelude to the ultimate, ‘Why am I me?’—ignites panic in his heart.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run (1960)

People , Mountain , Universe , Heart

“The blue distance, the mysterious Heavens, the example of birds and insects flying everywhere —are always beckoning Humanity to rise into the air.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

from "The Successes of Air Balloons in the XIX Century", 1901 http://www.informatics.org/museum/tsilbio.html

Bird , Flying

“Jesus loved me and I knew not why.
And I loved Him because He quickened my spirit to heights beyond my stature, and to depths beyond my sounding.
Love is a sacred mystery.
To those who love, it remains forever wordless;
But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

John At Patmos: Jesus The Gracious
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

Love

“All of our conscious states, without exception, are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain, and they are realized in the brain as higher level, or system features. It's about as mysterious as the liquidity of water, right? The liquidity is not an extra juice squirted out by the H2O molecules, it's a condition that the system is in; and just as the jar full of water can go from a liquid to solid, depending on the behavior of the molecules, so your brain can go from a state of being conscious to a state of being unconscious, depending on the behavior of the molecules. The famous mind body problem is that simple.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

"Our shared condition — consciousness" (May, 2013)

Behavior , Problem , Water , Dependency

“All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Introduction : Woman as Other http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/2nd-sex/introduction.htm
The Second Sex (1949)

Women , Reality , Appearance

“There is a mystery about the Jews … and within this mystery lies the reason for the folk pride of the house of Abraham. This pride exists despite the disabilities that come from many centuries of ostracism.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life (1959)

Housing

“I have found power in the mysteries of thought,
exaltation in the changing of the Muses;
I have been versed in the reasonings of men;
but Fate is stronger than anything I have known.”

Euripidés Alcestis

Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 962

Men , Fate , Change

“These words were said full tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any that shall be saved. Then were it a great unkindness to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blameth not me for sin.
And in these words I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven: in which knowing we shall verily see the cause why He suffered sin to come. In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 27
Context: And for the tender love that our good Lord hath to all that shall be saved, He comforteth readily and sweetly, signifying thus: It is sooth that sin is cause of all this pain; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
These words were said full tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any that shall be saved. Then were it a great unkindness to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blameth not me for sin.
And in these words I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven: in which knowing we shall verily see the cause why He suffered sin to come. In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God.

God , Suffering , Joy

“Our Lord says, to those who can hear what Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery, that "the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). That word points out the fact that the Divine good is not something apart from our nature, and is not removed far away from those who have the will to seek it; it is in fact within each of us, ignored indeed, and unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures of life, but found again whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking towards it.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Life , Wisdom , God , Pleasure

“The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery!
Big fish alone escape from thee!”

James Jeffrey Roche (1847–1908) American journalist

"The Net Of Law", The V-A-S-E & Other Bric-a-Brac (published by Richard G. Badger Company, Boston, 1900)

Law , Fish , Strong

“The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply asserts being, "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2006, Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections (2006)

Wisdom , God , Faith , Religion

“[Art is].. the mysterious expression of the mysterious..”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 17

Art

“[T]he Capgras delusion [is] a bizarre affliction that occasionally strikes human beings who have suffered brain damage. The defining mark of the Capgras delusion is the sufferer's conviction that a close acquaintance (usually a loved one) has been replaced by an impostor who looks like (and sounds like, and acts like) the genuine companion, who has mysteriously disappeared! … What is particularly surprising about these cases is that they don't depend on subtle disguises and fleeting glimpses. On the contrary, the delusion persists even when the target individual is closely scrutinized by the [Capgras sufferer], and is even pleading for recognition. Capgras sufferers have been known to murder their spouses, so sure are they that these look-alike interlopers are trying to step into their shoes — into whole lives — that are not rightfully theirs! There can be no doubt that in such a sad case, the [sufferer] in question has deemed true some very specific proposition of nonidentity: This man is not my husband; this man is a qualitatively similar to my husband as ever can be, and yet he is not my husband. Of particular interest to us is the fact that people suffering from such a delusion can be quite unable to say why they are so sure.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

Love , People , Sadness , Shoe

“Theology passes; religion, as a sentiment or feeling of awe and reverence in the presence of the vastness and mystery of the universe, remains.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Preface
The Light of Day (1900)

Religion , Feeling , Universe

“im afraid i must say that i do not find the mysteries featured on "scooby-doo" challenging enough.”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/934242047015387136]
Tweets by year, 2017

“In the [art-magazine] 'Kunst-Kronijk' my work 'Monastic corridor' came under your eyes; it is after a drawing that I started at Kleve after Nature and of which the painting is now almost finished. I believe, you know Kleve. The smallest of the Catholic Churches is a kind of monastery church; it has a nice sacristy, and the passage along the building gave me the motive of which you saw the lithography. On the same spot I designed a sketch in the 'Paarden-posterij' [Horse post-location] (where the cars are stored at Emmerich). I later made it a drawing - one of my best, and also the construction of it is now already in oil, to be completed soon. As motive, aspect, effect, etc. it pleases everyone - it is a real stable with lots of horses in it, and yet I do not have to make an enormous effort to paint the horses. As they are in the stable, they take the mysterious part [of the image]. Who knows, the K[unst]-K[ronyk] will produce a reproduction of it.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch, (citaat van een brief van Johannes Bosboom, in het Nederlands:) In de 'Kunstkronijk' kwam U mijn 'Kloostergang' onder de oogen; 't is naar een Teek[ening] die ik te Cleef naar de Natuur begon en waarvan nu de schilderij bijna gereed is. Ik geloof, gij kent Kleef. De kleinste der Kath. Kerken is een [soort] van Kloosterkerk, heeft een aardige sacristy en de gang langs het Pand gaf mij het motief, waarvan gij de lith[ographie] zaagt. Bij datzelfde verblijf ontwierp ik eene schets in de Paardenposterij (waar de wagens op Emmerik stallen). Ik maakte die later tot eene Teek[ening], een mijner beste, en ook daarvan staat de aanleg in olie gereed, om eerlang voltooid te worden. Als motief, aspect, effect, etc. bevalt het een ieder - 't is een echte stal, waar veel paarden in zijn, en toch hoef ik mij aan het schilderen der paarden niet te buiten te gaan. Zooals ze erin zijn, nemen zij het mysterieuse gedeelte in. Wie weet, levert de K[unst]-K[ronyk] er niet een reproductie van.
Quote from Bosboom's letter, 1866; as cited in: Uit het leven van een kunstenaarspaar: brieven van Johannes Bosboom, H.F.W. Jeltes, 1916 https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/excerpts/437 (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1860's

Art , Cars , Motivation , Nature

Quotes about mystery page 11

Quotes about mystery
page 11